Seek First the Kingdom

A sermon for the eighth Sunday of Epiphany, February 27, 2011.

Isaiah 49:8-16a

Psalm 131

1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Matthew 6:24-34

O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore. (Psalm 131:3)

Undoubtedly, the texts for this week suggest one theme over and above all others:

God will take care of his people.

We have the beautiful promise of God to his people:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. (Isaiah 49:15-16a)

And then the acknowledgement of this care by the Psalmist:

I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. (Psalm 131:2)

And finally -- the consummation of this theological truth in Jesus’ teaching to consider the lilies and the birds and learn the simplicity of God’s care for the world

therefore be not anxious!

We can now go home. It’s easy. Remember that God will take care of us. Don’t worry, be happy.

Man. That was an easy sermon. I wish.

As a preface to what follows, I want to confess how I’ve struggled in preparing this sermon. It is a difficult subject, but it is what I think we all need to hear. Please note the use of the word “we” in what follows -- I am speaking just as much to myself as to anyone. What follows is what I feel that I need to come to grips with if I am to manifest an authentic and truthful witness as a Christian in 21st century America. I am speaking to myself, you can listen in if you like. So here goes.

There is great disconnect between what we know and hear about God and how we feel and act in the everyday.

We can leave church having heard a sermon about how God will provide all our needs, that we can have eternal security in God’s grace abundantly given through Christ.

But then our car will die and suddenly needs a new engine.

We immediately forget God’s providing care and jump back into our habit of thinking that we’ve gained as citizens of this world, namely:

I am the maker and sustainer of my own life and must therefore figure this out, fix this, make it better. The answer to my problems lies in what I can obtain by my own efforts with the help of some cash.

Whereas we may think in our best moments about all of the comforting notions of God’s care and we may remind others in their distress of God’s care, our autopilot thinking is fundamentally that we are makers of our own reality -- we are the authors of our successes and the redeemers of our misfortunes.
Moreover, our autopilot reminds us, the answer to our problems, the cure to our distress, lies in our best efforts supported by our finances.

Why do we worry so much if God is in control and will take care of us? How can we be so confident on Sunday that our lives are in God’s care and providence and yet Monday through Friday live in shadow of anxiety? Where is the respite from this affliction?

The problem is not that we forget during the week all about God’s care, that if we just thought more about God’s providence we would be less anxious. That’s probably true, but there’s more to our problem than just theological amnesia.

It’s not about thoughts, it’s about loves. What we love determines who we are. As Jesus put it, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6:21)

Our problem is that our love is divided. We want to be a good person, but we also want material success. We want to love our neighbor, but not when it’s inconvenient. We want to serve God, but we also want to be comfortable. We want to do what’s right, but we also want to be prosperous. We want to trust God, but we stand in reverent fear of the Market. Therefore we stand as people who love the idea of serving God with our whole heart and resting in his care but at the same time desire the comfort, peace, and security offered to us by the products and programs of the market.

“You cannot serve two masters,” we hear, “for you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and material possessions.”

We believe the lies distributed wholesale in the media that we are fundamentally consumers in need of products to make us happy, cool, successful, sexy, confident, powerful. We believe them and we put our trust in their objects -- the pantheon of products that offer the illusion of peace and prosperity.

Throughout the working week we find ourselves engaged in the various liturgies of consumption and entertainment, giving the majority of our attention and time to the demands of material comfort and prosperity -- serving not God, but material possessions.

But what unstable gods material possessions are! Just look at the history of the market -- it can all come crashing down. Products breed the need for more products, entertainment fosters a insatiable appetite for novelty.

The gods of products, programs, and property consume our attention and enslave us in a system where we must keep consuming more and more in order to maintain satisfaction in life.

Worse! They lead us more and more to believe that we are the authors of our own success and the redeemers of our misfortunes. And by believing that, we become increasingly obsessed with our own abilities and disabilities -- our own power and weakness -- we become self-absorbed.

And we then wonder where our anxiety comes from? We are serving two gods, and one of them is impossible to please.

We’ll get no mercy from the market, no peace from products. Only a tyrannical demand for new! more! better!

Let’s contrast now this materialism so deeply entrenched in our world with the discipleship that Jesus invites us into.

do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.

Those whose treasure is in material possessions will be always striving to secure food, drink, and clothing and seek to find peace and security in the fortress of possessions they build around themselves.

But Christ calls us to seek a greater treasure:

do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Christ is calling us to remember our identity as Christians. We are not fundamentally consumers in need of products, patrons in need of services, audiences in need of entertainment -- we are those who have come to know the light of the truth of God, the truth of the forgiveness that God gives, and the forgiveness which frees us from ourselves to love God and our neighbor and find our fulfillment in God’s story and not our own.

Seek first not food, drink, or clothing, but the kingdom of God. It is through our participation in God’s kingdom that we will find respite from our anxieties. Because when we seek first God’s kingdom we are participating in God’s healing of the world, God’s deliverance of humanity from the tyranny of our own selfish desires into the freedom of loving and serving the other, from the anxiety of making money to the blessedness of giving rather than receiving, we are brought to our true place in the world as children of a God who came to serve not be served.

When our hearts are glued to material possessions, we become more and more selfishly oriented, our focus is our own needs and desires and how they might be fulfilled. Even things as simple as food, drink, and clothing become means to increase the attention we give to our own wishes.

But when our hearts have been disentangled from things and refocused on the beauty of God’s new reality, the healing of the world through Christ, we become more and more excited about the fulfillment of others, the manifestation of justice and peace in the world, the proclamation of truth to a world that has been enslaved by lies. We no longer serve two masters, but the one master in whom there is true life and true joy and true health.

Seek first the kingdom and all those other things will be taken care of. Let us encourage each other as much as we can, let us join together in this common pursuit of God’s kingdom. Let this call of our Lord’s not fall on individuals but on the community that there might be strength in our numbers as together we resist the empty promises of the market and follow Christ. Let us seek God’s grace together to rise above the struggle for material possessions, temporal peace and prosperity -- to the higher calling of love for a world in need of people who don’t seek first their own power and advancement, but God’s kingdom and his justice. Amen.